Black Dress: The Making Of A Story
My most chilling – and successful – story (if successful means the number of times it’s been published) came straight from my unconscious mind. It’s the only story I’ve ever written that required minimal tweaking rather than driving myself crazy with endless rewrites before it felt ‘right’. I found Black Dress on my hard disc […]
Business Writing Magic
Many people tell me they have big problems writing for their business. They know all the stuff they’re supposed to do to promote their products and services: email marketing, newsletters, articles, tweets… But they don’t know where to start. They get stuck. Their brilliant ideas go down like a lead balloon on the page. How […]
Picasso and You
Do you believe that talent is innate? That when talented people sit down to write or paint or play music, it just flows out effortlessly into amazing art? But when you sit down to write, it’s like wading through treacle in ski boots– and that’s on good days. So you obviously have no talent, you’re […]
Why I Failed Ancient History
“Cicero,” declared my grammar school classics teacher, “was an old windbag.” And that’s when it all came alive. I was a straight A student – Latin, Greek and Ancient History. What most people don’t know is that I failed my Ancient History exams at Cambridge. I’d never been that good at history, which wasn’t helped […]
The Three Little Pigs
When my mum came to pick me up after my scary first morning at primary school, I pretended I had not left a puddle on the brown polished wood floor of the classroom. If I pretended it wasn’t there, no one would see it. But childen’s magic doesn’t work for grownups.